One universal rule seems to be priming the pump for action. A lot of advice like: work only for 10 minutes, 30 minutes or whatever seems to address the same common underlying cause.
I used to think that too, but now disagree. (The timing rule does work fine over here.) Generalizing one solution doesn’t work all the time.
For example there are people that really hate to get interrupted—which a n minute timer does. Or people with an aversion to being timed in any way.
I would like to read some setups people use successfully at some point.
On reading again this comment might have missed some pieces.
Background thought was, that my second tester does some very complicated programming, and tends to get thrown out of flow by a alarm going of. So for her a upward counter (a countup?) would work better.
When someone has an aversion to being times, he might be able to find a different way to quantify success. Two ideas are: a) getting the habit of starting n number of times till it feels like something has been done or b) getting a certain number of items done, without timing them.
I experience a) when for some reason my timer does not work. There is a rule I have against checking it—to prevent getting anxious about how little time has passed. But when it does not ring after an hour I notice that.
One universal rule seems to be priming the pump for action. A lot of advice like: work only for 10 minutes, 30 minutes or whatever seems to address the same common underlying cause.
I used to think that too, but now disagree. (The timing rule does work fine over here.) Generalizing one solution doesn’t work all the time. For example there are people that really hate to get interrupted—which a n minute timer does. Or people with an aversion to being timed in any way. I would like to read some setups people use successfully at some point.
On reading again this comment might have missed some pieces. Background thought was, that my second tester does some very complicated programming, and tends to get thrown out of flow by a alarm going of. So for her a upward counter (a countup?) would work better.
When someone has an aversion to being times, he might be able to find a different way to quantify success. Two ideas are: a) getting the habit of starting n number of times till it feels like something has been done or b) getting a certain number of items done, without timing them.
I experience a) when for some reason my timer does not work. There is a rule I have against checking it—to prevent getting anxious about how little time has passed. But when it does not ring after an hour I notice that.